My inner epidemiologist

A friend of my relatives' wrote to me recently and talked about discovering she was allergic to gluten, and said that doctors had been telling her for so many years that if she would just fix the way she was thinking, her gut problems would disappear. I wrote back and said that is exactly what I have been learning about in reverse: I have heard if you heal your gut, your brain can work the way it is meant to. (Which reveals my own presupposition that there is some kind of bodily intelligence, a seeking out of equilibrium, if we can tap into it.)

Learning that there are neurons in the gut has set off many chains of ideas for me. It feels like things are falling into place about disease and the people I know and what so many of them are suffering from. Some of what I learned came from a book called Dangerous Grains, and an interesting film I screened last fall discussed the possible connections between diet, GI, and developmental issues, such as autism and sensory integration disorder. I have been fascinated by this idea and have been doing some research. I mentioned my "inner epidemiologist" to the friend in a reply and I have been thinking about studying this seriously ever since. It fits with some of the research I have done on pharmacological drugs and their effects. I do wonder whether we are pounding the heck out of our heads and bodies with these chemical sledgehammers when we may need to be concentrating on healing our guts instead.

Meanwhile, I'm curious about what I could do now to improve things for kids at school. One of our kid's greatest frustrations, aside from not being able to have the same treats everyone else has on birthdays, is no longer getting to have hot lunches at school. I spoke with the person in charge of our district's lunch program, and she said, "I don't see gluten-free anywhere on the horizon." All the school lunches are loaded with gluten, and the rest have cheese. I was hoping that the nachos might have been a good choice, but even the cheese sauce contains "modified food starch," a substance far too indeterminate to be classified as gluten-free. But what if, like the new "harvest bar," stocked with all the usual suspects (the cut-up fruits and veggies and iceberg lettuce salad you usually find in the lunches anyway), you had a gluten-free stand that had a selection of protein-rich, whole-grain muffins and energy bars? What if someone came in now and then and made buckwheat crepes at lunch and filled them with steamed asparagus or sliced almonds and fruit? I have long been disgusted at all the white-flour laden snacks I see at school -- the ones the teachers and parents often pick up on their way to school. The donuts, the cookies, the cupcakes. White flour and transfats galore. Ick. I wonder whether a series of talks on "Food and Mood," would appeal at all to teachers, other school personnel, and parents. It would be so interesting to gather some experts and allow them to field questions about the current research on diet and behavior.

I see kids who have allergies or behavioral issues and wonder sometimes, what if you stopped eating white wheat flour? Or gluten? Or dairy? How would you behave if your guts were not continuously* being injured by a large proportion of the food you ate every day?


*Incidentally, I love the mnemonic for how to remember the difference between continuous and continual: continuous means one uninterrupted sequence (the word ends in ous, get it?). Continual is the one that is ongoing yet intermittent.

-rk